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Author Topic: Puzzled about printing patch targets for profiles creation  (Read 3249 times)

vikcious

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Puzzled about printing patch targets for profiles creation
« on: February 10, 2019, 07:01:06 am »

While I am still digging to find out about the weird differences two spectrophotometers are generating in their respective generated profiles (see my other thread) I am trying to reduce any discrepancies between the testing methods.
I am using two different target printing options:
A) Doug Gray's "null trick" option and B) the usual way (and recommended by Canon) by using Canon Print Studio Pro (PSP) or Canon Professional Print & Layout (PPL) plugins from Photoshop.

Yet I've discovered something that puzzles me.
Let's brake Doug Gray's "null trick" workflow into steps:

1. Open tiff target in Photoshop
2. Assign any profile (not convert) to the tiff (I chose Canon PRO-2000/520 Satin Photo Paper 240g)
3. Open print dialog
4. Select Color Handling: Photoshop Manages Colors
5. Select Printer Profile: Canon PRO-2000/520 Satin Photo Paper 240g (same as the one assigned before to the tiff)
6. Leave all the other options as they are (see attached)
7. Open "Print Settings" choose Print Quality: High
8. Choose Color Mode: Color and Color Settings: Matching Off
9. Select Media Type: Plain Paper --> and here comes trouble!!!

Basically upon wrongly choosing the "Media Type" once as "Plain" and once as "Canon Satin Photo Paper 240g" BUT printing on the same paper resulted obvious differences in the printed targets, visually noticeable.
The same is applicable for printing using Canon PSP / PPL when choosing different papers to print the targets on. Mind that in Canon PSP /PPL I don't assign any profile and just choose "Color Mode: No Color Correction".

Why is this happening? Wasn't the bypassing of color management supposed to print the target in a paper & color agnostic way?
Why is changing the Paper Type altering the colors in the printed target? If this is 'normal' how am I supposed to choose the right paper, prior to being able to profile it?

I am baffled, please enlighten me! Thank you!
« Last Edit: February 10, 2019, 07:06:22 am by vikcious »
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Dave Rosser

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Re: Puzzled about printing patch targets for profiles creation
« Reply #1 on: February 10, 2019, 07:35:59 am »

I am sure that one of our real experts will answer this but as I remember from experimenting a few years ago you try different media types to adjust the amount of ink laid down. You would expect quite different results with different media types selected. As I remember it you have to have a grey scale in your test image and you select the correct media type to use by examining the shadow separation.  Once you have determined the correct media type to use you then print out the test chart (Adobe have a special app for doing this which prints without any color correction at all).
see https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/no-color-management-option-missing.html

Dave
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nirpat89

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Re: Puzzled about printing patch targets for profiles creation
« Reply #2 on: February 10, 2019, 08:55:02 am »

While I am still digging to find out about the weird differences two spectrophotometers are generating in their respective generated profiles (see my other thread) I am trying to reduce any discrepancies between the testing methods.
I am using two different target printing options:
A) Doug Gray's "null trick" option and B) the usual way (and recommended by Canon) by using Canon Print Studio Pro (PSP) or Canon Professional Print & Layout (PPL) plugins from Photoshop.

Yet I've discovered something that puzzles me.
Let's brake Doug Gray's "null trick" workflow into steps:

1. Open tiff target in Photoshop
2. Assign any profile (not convert) to the tiff (I chose Canon PRO-2000/520 Satin Photo Paper 240g)
3. Open print dialog
4. Select Color Handling: Photoshop Manages Colors
5. Select Printer Profile: Canon PRO-2000/520 Satin Photo Paper 240g (same as the one assigned before to the tiff)
6. Leave all the other options as they are (see attached)
7. Open "Print Settings" choose Print Quality: High
8. Choose Color Mode: Color and Color Settings: Matching Off
9. Select Media Type: Plain Paper --> and here comes trouble!!!

Basically upon wrongly choosing the "Media Type" once as "Plain" and once as "Canon Satin Photo Paper 240g" BUT printing on the same paper resulted obvious differences in the printed targets, visually noticeable.
The same is applicable for printing using Canon PSP / PPL when choosing different papers to print the targets on. Mind that in Canon PSP /PPL I don't assign any profile and just choose "Color Mode: No Color Correction".

Why is this happening? Wasn't the bypassing of color management supposed to print the target in a paper & color agnostic way?
Why is changing the Paper Type altering the colors in the printed target? If this is 'normal' how am I supposed to choose the right paper, prior to being able to profile it?

I am baffled, please enlighten me! Thank you!

You must choose the exact same conditions in the Print Settings as what you intend the profile to be used for.  By choosing the media type as plain paper you not only changed the amount of ink laid but also the speed and the dpi of the print, all of which would affect the resulting profiles. 

The by-pass is only for color management (i.e. whether or not and where to use the printer profile) not about how the printer utilizes the data and interprets them for the particular media type.

:Niranjan (not a real expert... :) )
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Puzzled about printing patch targets for profiles creation
« Reply #3 on: February 10, 2019, 09:22:37 am »

Let's go back to basics. The purpose of printing profiling targets is to capture a characterization of how the printer reproduces the target file colours left to its own devices without colour management active. You should not be printing with a paper profile active. But you do need to specify the printer Media Type that will be the same Media Type you will use for the paper for which you are creating the profile. So you need to specify the Media Type and the print quality you will be using. That's it. For the Canon Pro-2000 printer use Print Studio Pro for a reliable print of your profiling target. This is all you need. Of course every different Media Type will produce a different target appearance. Of course print the target on the same paper you are profiling for and you will be using to print with. No need to complicate life with anything else.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Puzzled about printing patch targets for profiles creation
« Reply #4 on: February 10, 2019, 09:26:49 am »

Oh - important reminder - when using Print Studio Pro - make sure you have "No Color Controls" selected.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Doug Gray

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Re: Puzzled about printing patch targets for profiles creation
« Reply #5 on: February 10, 2019, 12:18:03 pm »

Let's go back to basics. The purpose of printing profiling targets is to capture a characterization of how the printer reproduces the target file colours left to its own devices without colour management active. You should not be printing with a paper profile active. But you do need to specify the printer Media Type that will be the same Media Type you will use for the paper for which you are creating the profile. So you need to specify the Media Type and the print quality you will be using. That's it. For the Canon Pro-2000 printer use Print Studio Pro for a reliable print of your profiling target. This is all you need. Of course every different Media Type will produce a different target appearance. Of course print the target on the same paper you are profiling for and you will be using to print with. No need to complicate life with anything else.

Oh - important reminder - when using Print Studio Pro - make sure you have "No Color Controls" selected.

You must choose the exact same conditions in the Print Settings as what you intend the profile to be used for.  By choosing the media type as plain paper you not only changed the amount of ink laid but also the speed and the dpi of the print, all of which would affect the resulting profiles. 

The by-pass is only for color management (i.e. whether or not and where to use the printer profile) not about how the printer utilizes the data and interprets them for the particular media type.

:Niranjan (not a real expert... :) )

All great advice.

Victor, it's now clear what rabbit hole you have gone down. These printer/paper type settings are absolutely critical to getting the best print results. Especially the differences between matte and glossy paper. For one, they use different black inks and a mismatch will always produce suboptimal to really bad results.

Glossy type papers include descriptions such as luster, pearl, semi-gloss and sometimes even semi-matte. Matte type papers have on major distinguishing characteristics. The reflect light specularly. If you move paper around in one strong light you will see reflections from the light that vary depending on how you hold the paper. Glossy will have mirror like relfections, pearl,luster, semi-gloss will have diffuse reflections that vary as you tilt the paper.

One other thing. Stop using the null-transform trick for targets. It's of value with other printers where there isn't a direct way to print w/o color management because Photoshop some time back removed the option to do this and alternatives, such as ACPU have limited ability to position an image and worse, tend to shrink it somewhat. I only use it because I have no alternative with my Epson and it makes it easy place multiple targets on a paper roll. It's not needed for you since Canon's PSP has a direct way to print in Photoshop w/o color management.

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vikcious

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Re: Puzzled about printing patch targets for profiles creation
« Reply #6 on: February 10, 2019, 12:49:33 pm »

Let's go back to basics. The purpose of printing profiling targets is to capture a characterization of how the printer reproduces the target file colours left to its own devices without colour management active. You should not be printing with a paper profile active. But you do need to specify the printer Media Type that will be the same Media Type you will use for the paper for which you are creating the profile. So you need to specify the Media Type and the print quality you will be using. That's it. For the Canon Pro-2000 printer use Print Studio Pro for a reliable print of your profiling target. This is all you need. Of course every different Media Type will produce a different target appearance. Of course print the target on the same paper you are profiling for and you will be using to print with. No need to complicate life with anything else.

Dear Mark,

Much to my awe the Canon PSP is rubbish! Absolutely smth wrong with it. Basically no matter what it will not print the targets correctly, meaning even if  "Color Mode: No Color Correction" is engaged the output print is still color managed.
Indeed PRO-2000 is my first serious printer and I absolutely love it BUT I did not have any prior experience on printer profiling thus I have miserably failed to recognize that Canon PSP is not working right until today. Ever since I have started printing targets, last November, I had a strange feeling that the colors on the printed targets looked somehow washed-out, muted color when compared against the target TIFF. I thought it was supposed to be so but I was wrong.
I thought it was my old Dell monitor that was playing tricks on me and I've upgraded to one professional NEC Spectra View.

And yet... the printed targets looked miserable and you could see (from the other thread) that the profiling produces miserable results. But today it occurred to me I should be trying to print the target the old fashioned way:
from PS tell that printer is managing colors --> Set in printer settings "Color Mode: Color and Color Settings: Matching Off" --> And bloody click "Print" with no strings attached, no assigned profile or anything.

And for the first time ever the colors printed really looked like not-managed, raw, forceful, vivid and punchy! And guess what: first profile, rushed in, done in i1Profiler yielded one beautiful profile, in the gamut size range of the original Canon similar profile for a "satin like" paper.
So while I am really disappointed about the lost time and resources so far I am happy I realized the issue is beyond me... how can it be fixed? Hard to tell.

In short:
NULL PRINTING is not working for Canon PRO-x000 series and so is ACPU
Canon PSP plugin + PS does not turn color management OFF... yes, I stand by my statement and I am willing to future explore / evaluate the facts.
Printing from i1Profiler with  printer settings "Color Mode: Color and Color Settings: Matching Off" prints targets correctly ... sorry Doug for not having listened to you earlier and trying it!


I have attached the two shots of how 100% of my printed targets in PS+ Canon PSP look like vs real NO_COLOR_MANAGEMENT. I am pretty sure it's easy to guess which one is which.

« Last Edit: February 10, 2019, 12:58:16 pm by vikcious »
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Puzzled about printing patch targets for profiles creation
« Reply #7 on: February 10, 2019, 02:19:49 pm »

Firstly, I am surprised PSP is not working properly, if indeed that's the case, because it was fine when I used it - see my Canon Pro-2000 review on this website, and I am also puzzled by the blue surround of the targets and the bluishness of what may be neutral patches. None of that looks right to me.

Printing the targets from i1Profiler should also be OK.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Doug Gray

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Re: Puzzled about printing patch targets for profiles creation
« Reply #8 on: February 10, 2019, 03:22:24 pm »

Firstly, I am surprised PSP is not working properly, if indeed that's the case, because it was fine when I used it - see my Canon Pro-2000 review on this website, and I am also puzzled by the blue surround of the targets and the bluishness of what may be neutral patches. None of that looks right to me.

Hard to tell much from the scans of the prints but it's odd that one is 3% smaller than the other. Where have I seen that before?  ACPU!  But he didn't use ACPU. So what's up? At a minimum the print settings differ both in dimension and color. One generally having more saturated colors than the other.
Quote

Printing the targets from i1Profiler should also be OK.
But would that be the case here? Doesn't ACPU use the same printing path and settings as direct from I1Profiler and you noted ACPU was not operating properly.

It's like everything he tries is producing weird results.
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Puzzled about printing patch targets for profiles creation
« Reply #9 on: February 10, 2019, 03:50:42 pm »

Hard to tell much from the scans of the prints but it's odd that one is 3% smaller than the other. Where have I seen that before?  ACPU!  But he didn't use ACPU. So what's up? At a minimum the print settings differ both in dimension and color. One generally having more saturated colors than the other.But would that be the case here? Doesn't ACPU use the same printing path and settings as direct from I1Profiler and you noted ACPU was not operating properly.

It's like everything he tries is producing weird results.

The only way he'll know for sure whether i1Profiler floats his boat is to try it. In principle you are correct that i1Profiler and ACPU should be doing the same kind of thing, but there are "gotchas" under hood with some of this stuff - in particular with the large format Canon printers -  that are very hard to unearth without first just trying the software and seeing what it does. And that's right - for the Pro-2000 we could not get ACPU to work properly, but PSP with "No Color Coontrols" on did.
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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Doug Gray

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Re: Puzzled about printing patch targets for profiles creation
« Reply #10 on: February 10, 2019, 03:58:25 pm »

The only way he'll know for sure whether i1Profiler floats his boat is to try it. In principle you are correct that i1Profiler and ACPU should be doing the same kind of thing, but there are "gotchas" under hood with some of this stuff - in particular with the large format Canon printers -  that are very hard to unearth without first just trying the software and seeing what it does.

Which is why when I make new profiles I almost always print a separate patch set, in gamut, with an independent constellation of specified Lab values in ProPhoto RGB. Then measure those and look at the dE00 distribution. If the averages get even close to 1, I did something wrong.
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vikcious

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Re: Puzzled about printing patch targets for profiles creation
« Reply #11 on: February 10, 2019, 04:09:59 pm »

Firstly, I am surprised PSP is not working properly, if indeed that's the case, because it was fine when I used it - see my Canon Pro-2000 review on this website, and I am also puzzled by the blue surround of the targets and the bluishness of what may be neutral patches. None of that looks right to me.

Printing the targets from i1Profiler should also be OK.

Hi Mark,

I was just as surprised as you are! :( I am veryy keen to confirm this with other PRO-x000 series, maybe with Panagiotis or someone else. Ever since your PRO-2000 review on LuLa - that actually was the decisive review in my decision to go for the PRO-2000, btw :) - I was left with the clear "lesson" in my head that by the time I would be doing paper profiling I would use that PSP workflow. Until today... :(

The test is very simple, and you can trust me I'm no fool about ticking options so we can exclude any "being distracted":
- Print a i1Profiler target from i1Profiler with the Color Mode: Color and Color Settings: Matching Off] in the printer settings
- Print the same i1Profiler target from PS using Canon PSP or even Canon PPL (tested that too!) with Color Mode: No Color Correction option ticked.

I am not sure if I had mentioned but the usage of ACPU is really out_of_discussion since most of the targets' grays will be ... kinda brown.

I apologies for the quality of the submitted samples but the WB on my iPhone XS Max might have gone bananas though the pictures were taken outside, daylight, sunny.
I hope that the two new ones do some justice in explaining the situation: in short PS + Canon PSP = pale, faded while i1Profiler + Color Settings: Matching Off is vivid and closer to the initial un-tagged TIFF. Hence my other issue with reduced gamut is now 110% solved! :)
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Puzzled about printing patch targets for profiles creation
« Reply #12 on: February 10, 2019, 08:58:41 pm »

Well, I hope you have been enjoying the printer - until today. As for the profiling, we struggled until we found the solution, so we were very pleased when we did and that is why I recommended it back then. While we don't understand why the PSP approach has failed you, am I correct to infer from your latest comment that you now consider the target printing problem resolved?
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Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
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vikcious

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Re: Puzzled about printing patch targets for profiles creation
« Reply #13 on: February 11, 2019, 03:07:25 am »

Well, I hope you have been enjoying the printer - until today.
I would say that from now on even more! :)

As for the profiling, we struggled until we found the solution, so we were very pleased when we did and that is why I recommended it back then. While we don't understand why the PSP approach has failed you, am I correct to infer from your latest comment that you now consider the target printing problem resolved?
As I've said Mark, I am still waiting for some confirmation from other Canon owners. If my saying remains fact that we should be addressing this back to Canon. As for my profiling experience, at least while I'm using the targets printing from i1Profiler (as described) or from PS but without any help from PSP / PLL or ACPU ... all is fine by now and I am ok with the quality of my actual profiles. Definitely they could be improved but they are way better than the ones based on PS+PSP / Null Print workflows.

Thanks again for your support.
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Panagiotis

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Re: Puzzled about printing patch targets for profiles creation
« Reply #14 on: February 11, 2019, 03:14:21 am »

Maybe there is a bug in PSP.

I sent an untaged tiff chart file from PS (win-latest) to Canon PSP 2.2.3 and it opens it as sRGB. I can see that in the left side Image Information column in PSP.
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vikcious

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Re: Puzzled about printing patch targets for profiles creation
« Reply #15 on: February 11, 2019, 03:24:01 am »

Maybe there is a bug in PSP.
It could be! Canon launched PPL to replace PSP but from an workflow perspective is a mess. Not sure if you've checked it. I've printed targets from PPL too with the same unfortunate result.

I sent an untaged tiff chart file from PS (win-latest) to Canon PSP 2.2.3 and it opens it as sRGB. I can see that in the left side Image Information column in PSP.
Weird! Anyway... best way to check is visually with two targets printed via PS+PSP and PS+Printer Manages Colors+ "Color Mode: Color and Color Settings: Matching Off" in the printer settings. The differences are striking...
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Panagiotis

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Re: Puzzled about printing patch targets for profiles creation
« Reply #16 on: February 11, 2019, 03:29:44 am »

It could be! Canon launched PPL to replace PSP but from an workflow perspective is a mess. Not sure if you've checked it. I've printed targets from PPL too with the same unfortunate result.
Weird! Anyway... best way to check is visually with two targets printed via PS+PSP and PS+Printer Manages Colors+ "Color Mode: Color and Color Settings: Matching Off" in the printer settings. The differences are striking...

Canon PPL also opens it as sRGB. It seems that there is a bug on PS or Canon side. Check the screenshot.
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vikcious

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Re: Puzzled about printing patch targets for profiles creation
« Reply #17 on: February 11, 2019, 03:35:51 am »

Canon PPL also opens it as sRGB. It seems that there is a bug on PS or Canon side. Check the screenshot.

Wow! Let me check on mine and will get back!
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Panagiotis

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Re: Puzzled about printing patch targets for profiles creation
« Reply #18 on: February 11, 2019, 03:39:29 am »

It's probably a Canon problem. PPL is a stand alone application also. When I open an untaged chart file from the standalone app it converts it to: Canon lJ PPL Color 1
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vikcious

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Re: Puzzled about printing patch targets for profiles creation
« Reply #19 on: February 11, 2019, 03:42:01 am »

It's probably a Canon problem. PPL is a stand alone application also. When I open an untaged chart file from the standalone app it converts it to: Canon lJ PPL Color 1
LOL...

Let's make it even worse... my untagged TIFF is now in ProPhoto RGB...
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